Roughly 38,153 people are going to be pretty upset at Harvard in a few weeks.

Harvard University announced that 40,246 students have applied this selection cycle.

According to the school's newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, it's the fewest applicants in three years. So far, the school has already accepted 825 students in December as part of the "Early Action" program, while "Regular Decision" students will learn their fate on March 26th.

An estimated 5.2% of students gain admittance each year. Using some quick math, that means a total of 2,093 will receive their golden ticket for life.

Don't feel too badly for the remaining 38,153 who find themselves rejected. I'm sure many will make do with the plebeian masses at Yale or Princeton or--dare say--even Columbia.

What cities are the best for book lovers? Apparently Pensacola is one of them.

When you think of Pensacola, FL, you don't usually think of a hotbed of literary action. Let's assume they just have supper clubs run by people named Louanne and Karen where they comb the latest Jodi Picoult book.

According to ApartmentGuide.com, Pensacola lands at #3 on their top ten list for best cities for book lovers.

The website's criteria was fairly straightforward. They looked at 14,000 cities that had at least one bookstore or library of any sort. Then, they eliminated any city that didn't have at least 50,000 people. That left the site with 764 cities. They then calculated the ratio per 100,000 citizens to figure out the most book-saturated cities.

The Top Ten:

1.)  Cambridge, MA

2.)  Berkeley, CA

3.)  Pensacola, FL

4.)  Ann Arbor, MI

5.)  Chapel Hill, NC

6.)  Santa Fe, NM

7.)  Marietta, GA

8.)  Saint Louis, MO

9.)  Cincinnati, OH

10.)  Birmingham, AL

Some of these cities are understandable as towns with a massive university as its backbone (Chapel Hill, Ann Arbor). While Berkeley is a mix of a college enclave and former hippie extension of San Francisco.

And ApartmentGuide.com says about Cambridge:

"Make no mistake, in the end, Cambridge is the ultimate high-end university town. Smart people matriculate here and smart people live here. And as the best city in America for booklovers, that shouldn't change any time soon."

You probably envision walking the streets of Cambridge and seeing small and cozy mom and pop bookstores holding casual readings with new authors--some tea and cookies in the corner, while a cat yawns from a nap in a window. Later, you might dream of passing austere universities like Harvard and MIT, laced in ivy and dappled in sunlight, like a Renoir painting come to life.

As someone who was born in Cambridge (and raised in the adjacent city), all I can say is...yeah--no. Smart people don't matriculate in Cambridge. Well-connected and well-to-do people do. Not smart people.

There's a difference.

As for Pensacola, don't underestimate the power of Louanne's homemade green bean casserole and a good book.



Sure, this sort of list doesn't include book clubs or writing circles, but have you ever been to a book club or writing circle? At least 75% of those people potentially have a restraining order against them.

Harvard Law School mistakenly listed Anthony Scaramucci as dead.

Say it with me: Only his political career is, Harvard...only his political career.

Harvard Law School released the latest printed edition of its alumni directory recently, where the former White House communications director has an asterisk beside his name. What does the asterisk mean? That Anthony Scaramucci is dead.

Harvard apologized, telling The Washington Post it was a regrettable "error" and that they'd fix the mistake in future editions.

The one small problem? Before this year, the directory was last printed six years ago. This means The Mooch might have to wait a bit before his resurrection can occur.

Mark Zuckerberg is going back to Harvard.

Mark Zuckerberg left Harvard as a sophomore with entrepreneurial dreams of starting a social network. Facebook was born, and Zuckerberg never went back to Harvard.

Until now.

Lest you think Zuckerberg is going back to complete his bachelor's degree--HA! That's a good laugh--think again. Harvard is looking the other way and asking the Facebook founder to give its commencement address this year, where he'll be bestowed with an honorary degree.

When you're a billionaire multiple times over, any degree from Harvard, real or fake, is just icing at this point.

Facebook is less particular about their hiring practices, while still being particular.

Potentially an executive at Facebook.

Investment banking.

Law.

Consulting firms.

A small handful of other professions.

Does your mom or dad wear a monocle or own a Bentley [but only with a man servant behind the wheel]? Did your grandfather have a closet full of top hats and smoking pipes? Do you know the elderly nanny that raised you better than your mother and father?  Does your name sound like a piece of furniture from Pottery Barn? Congratulations! You won the life lottery, and odds are you're employed in a small segment of career fields that desire such a background.

Facebook once operated similarly as well. As a smaller, promising upstart years ago born of Harvard's bosom, Facebook focused on hiring from a pool of candidates largely out of Ivy League schools, with the occasional Stanford thrown in for good measure. But today, as powerful companies focus solely on pedigree regardless of ability, the pool has drained thin. Very thin. This has led Facebook to expand their own talent pool search.

"We recruit from three hundred schools," Facebook vice president Janelle Gale mentioned at a San Francisco educator conference recently, all while shuffling her abacus and looking to be awarded a gold star. "We want to hire people who’s need to learn is greater than their need to be right," Gale said. What does that even mean? I don't know, but it's exciting in its ambiguity!

"We want people who are open and receptive. We want to make sure people are in jobs they are good at and enjoy," she continued.  People who are open and receptive and willing to accept being wrong when told so? Sounds like me as a bagger boy at a grocery store when I was fourteen. Where do I sign up?

Gale never specifically detailed the alleged three hundred schools Facebook recruits from, but Forbes analyzed LinkedIn's searchable database and found "at least 40 Facebook employees attended Arizona State, while nearly as many hail from Cal State, Chico. The University of Oregon has at least a dozen alumni at Facebook; Texas Tech can count six."

That's a steep drop off. Texas Tech counts six and we're only four schools into counting. Incuding the Ivy League and a handful of other overly connected schools, we still have a list of roughly 280 schools to flesh out. So how thin is this Facebook job search?

This is all related to what Lauren Rivera wrote late last year in the Harvard Business Review, studying how elite corporations have an incestuous relationship with elite schools, creating a cycle of elitist entitlement. "[Elite professions have] on-campus “school lists” [with] two tiers, based largely on prestige," Rivera notes. "So even before applications are received, employers allocate jobs based on alma mater, skewing opportunities toward (and against) students from particular campuses [...] This leaves most students from nonlisted schools out of the game."

Phew. At least we now know Facebook's hiring ambiguity wasn't done out of nobility but just pure necessity. The plebeian masses thought they might have a chance for a second, and that can't happen.

Harvard has a mumps outbreak.

Forty students have come down with the virus and the school is worried it could affect the May 26th commencement.

There have now been 40 confirmed cases of mumps at #Harvard. https://t.co/gPVJYsENGF pic.twitter.com/1agjus0GPf

— The Harvard Crimson (@thecrimson) April 26, 2016

This is very reminiscent of the time I graduated college with a cold.

In that no one really cared.

Harvard psychologist offers a tip to figure out if someone is lying.

In her new book Presence, Harvard psychologist Amy Cuddy says the tell-tale way to determine if someone is lying is through their actions.

Actions speak louder than words?

Yeah, something like that. In essence, the best example given is if someone is talking about something happy but their face looks stressed.

"Truth reveals itself more clearly through actions than it does through our words," says Cuddy.

Okay, so exactly like the old saying then.

Well, that just saved us all from reading the book.








Another old saying: "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." I don't know what that really means, but if you work for Harvard you might be able to write a 300 page book about it.

McDonald's Hamburger University is more discerning than Oxford, Cambridge, or Harvard.

This sort of story comes out every few years, and it's popped up again.

Nearly five years ago, news came out that Harvard University, with its 5.9% acceptance rate, was easier to get admitted into than McDonald's Hamburger University campus in Shanghai, which accepts fewer than 1% of applicants.

Now, news from London's The Mirror newspaper shares the same 'duh' moment shocking revelation that Hamburger University is also more discerning than Oxford University (18% acceptance rate) and the University of Cambridge (20.8%).

I think we all know the truth that students at Oxford and Cambridge are really just future Burger King employees anyway.




When are we going to come together as a human race and collectively admit that Ronald McDonald is freaky as hell? I don't want him smiling at me. The only people that smile like that want to invite you down to their basement--and my wealth of knowledge of bad Hollywood movies proves that you never come up from the basement once you go down.

CBSNews: The ten best college towns to live in...includes a place in Nebraska?

These sort of list come around every few weeks, always with completely different outcomes. Each media outlet uses different metrics, weighs those metrics in varying proportions, and typically offers some random statistic to completely skew the results toward something entirely randomized.

Which brings us to CBSNews, which decided to create their own "scientific" analysis of the best college towns today. The results (with college in parentheses):

1.)  Princeton, New Jersey  (Princeton University)
2.)  Kearney, Nebraska  (University of Nebraska--Kearney)
3.)  Boulder, Colorado  (University of Colorado--Boulder)
4.)  Bozeman, Montana  (University of Montana)
5.)  Cedar Falls, Iowa  (University of Northern Iowa)
6.)  Cambridge, Massachusetts  (Harvard, MIT, Cambridge College, Lesley University)
7.)  Ann Arbor, Michigan  (University of Michigan)
8.)  Grand Forks, North Dakota  (University of North Dakota)
9.)  Ames, Iowa  (Iowa State University)
10.)  Madison, Wisconsin  (University of Wisconsin)

Don't rub your eyes. You're seeing that correctly. Something called "Kearney, Nebraska" is considered the second best college town in America. Nothing Nebraska-related is ever good news. Even Bruce Springsteen hit a low point in his career in 1982 by naming one of his albums Nebraska. Do you know how Wikipedia describes that album?

"The songs on Nebraska both deal with ordinary, blue collar characters who face a challenge or a turning point in their lives, but also outsiders, criminals and mass murderers, who have little hope for the future - or no future at all, as in the title track, where the main character is sentenced to death in the electric chair."




Mass murderers and the death penalty! Sounds like a real toe-tapper, get down with your bad self kind of album. Even the album is in a bleak black and white. But you know why it's so depressing? Because it's Nebraska, that's why.

And then there was that murky movie a few years ago filmed in black and white as well, called--you guessed it--Nebraska. You know why it was filmed in black and white? Because seeing Nebraska in color is too much of an offense to the eyes of the rest of America.

The movie was nominated for six Academy Awards. You know how many it won? Zero. Do you know why? Because it's...

Oh, but, hey. Let's all move there.

A new college ranking says your best bet is to go to...CUNY Bernard M. Baruch College?

A ranking of 900 colleges and universities by a company called CollegeNet focused not on prestige, but on how much bang for your buck you get for attending the institution. Specifically, how well do various places of higher learning provide improvement on economic mobility and how affordable are these schools to families of disadvantaged financial means?

The top ten schools according to CollegeNet are nothing remotely close to those found in the Princeton Review or U.S. News and World Report's annual listings.

CollegeNet's ten are (with U.S. News and World Report's ranking as comparison):

And where do U.S. News and World Report's top five colleges and universities rank on CollegeNet's social mobility index?

I think we all kind of knew on some level that what's-its-face school...hold on, let me look it up again...uhh...CUNY Bernard M. Baruch College was where we all dreamed to go.


Ranking Graphs: CollegeNet, U.S. News, via Yahoo

Prisoners debate Harvard students, and the prisoners won.

The Bard Prison Initiative, part of Bard College located in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y, seeks to change the perception of prisoners convicted of violent crime, as well as put the "correction" in "correctional facility."

Part of this initiative has led to a prisoner debate team, which started in 2014. The team takes on some of the bigger powerhouse colleges and universities throughout the country, and isn't just competing--they're succeeding. Their latest success? Defeating Harvard.

“They caught us off guard,” Anais Carell, a 20-year-old junior from Chicago, told The Wall Street Journal.

As Alex Hall, a 31-year-old from Manhattan convicted of manslaughter countered, “We might not be as naturally rhetorically gifted, but we work really hard.”

The $2.5 million budget for the program isn't supplied by the state (which cowers at using tax dollars to educate prisoners), but instead by private donations.

Studies show the Bard Prison Initiative program actually works long-term. 40% of general population prisoners end up arrested within three years of their release. Those prisons with strong educational programs have recidivism rates that drop to 22%. By comparison, the recidivism rate for alumni of the Bard Prison Initiative program during that same time period is only 2%.

Putting the "correction" back into "correctional facility." What a concept.



Full disclosure: I have worked on educational programs through a prison. Some of the smartest, most gifted individuals I've ever known were men who committed a violent crime--often, usually, a crime of passion. A crime I could commit. A crime you could commit. A crime any of us would commit if placed in the same situation, position, or bearing in life.

And these same men I'd trust with my life, despite the fact that some might have already taken the life of another. Because they accomplished the one thing most any of you reading this cannot do--that I cannot do--and that is correct what needs correcting in ourselves.

Poets Reading Poetry: T.S. Eliot

Poetry is meant to be read aloud, but rarely is. As Oscar Wilde once said, "A poet can survive everything but a misprint."

So, cutting out the middle man, here is where we'll post famous poets reading their own poetry--the words off the page and in your ears, as they intended. And hopefully nothing is lost in the process.

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" wasn't written in a day--or a week or a month for that matter. T.S. Eliot spent the better part of a year and a half writing the poem, from February 1910 to the summer of 1911, finishing it when he was 22-years old. It remained unpublished for the next four years, when fellow poet Ezra Pound encouraged Poetry magazine's founder, Harriet Monroe, to give "Prufrock" a wider audience. She agreed.

Published during November 1915, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" covered 140 lines and took up six pages of Monroe's magazine, while also taking up a spot in the canon of Modernist poetry.

This audio clip covers the first two-thirds of the poem, before cutting out. It's potentially from recordings done at Harvard College in 1947 when Eliot was 59-years old.

Eliot's voice reads with clipped resonance, combining subtle trills on consonants that shouldn't hold any. His accent is the illegitimate lovechild of Boston Brahmin and London high society, as if Vincent Price was reading with higher-pitched, deliberate quality.


The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
               So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
               And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
               And should I then presume?
               And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head
               Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
               That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
               “That is not it at all,
               That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.




Audio: BrainPickings

Poll of graduates shows Harvard University is every stereotype you've envisioned.

Harvard University's school newspaper, The Crimson, polls graduating seniors every year regarding a myriad of topics, and this year's results are either to be expected or frightening, depending on how much of a cynic/realist you are.

The highlights:

Hey, Big Spender!

19.42% of graduating males report their first job's starting salary will be $90,000 or more, with 6.2% reporting they will earn more than $110,000 starting immediately. (Now would be the time to wax poetic about that time you graduated college and worked as a waiter at Applebees.) There's income inequality among genders at Harvard though, as only 3.57% of females report they will earn a starting salary of more than $90,000 upon graduation. The glass ceiling is universal, regardless of economic background.

Overall, nearly 70% of males and 45% of females report they will earn at least a $50,000 salary with their first job. In case you're wondering, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that the median individual income for any American is roughly $29,000.


So everyone on Wall Street attended Harvard?

The finance industry is attracting the plurality of graduates. Nearly 1-in-4 male Harvard graduates report entering the finance field, and 31% of all graduating seniors, male or female, report their first job will either be in finance or consulting.


Put another way, it's not an accepting place.

When it comes to accepting diversity on campus, Harvard apparently has a long way to go. 36% of non-white students reported feeling marginalized during their time at the university, with 60% of African Americans responding as such.

Likewise, sexual assault is abundantly prevalent on campus, with 12% of females and 2% of males reporting they have been sexually assaulted during their time at Harvard. Of those who responded about being assaulted, only 16% ever reported the crime.

42% of all Harvard graduates reported seeking out mental health counseling at some point. Of those that directly sought help through the school, 57.9% were neutral, dissatisfied, or very dissatisfied with their treatment. This contrasts greatly with students who sought counseling through off-campus means, where 74.4% of respondents reported they were satisfied or very satisfied with their treatment.


Politicians learn from a young age.

And, lastly, the Crimson reports that 17% of all Harvard graduating seniors admitted to cheating on their academics while attending the school.

The real kicker? Those who admit to be entering the field of politics proclaim to be much more honest. Only 7% of potential politicians admitted they ever cheated academically.

Harvard doesn't have books made of human skin.

For nearly a decade, the idea has floated around the internet about Harvard channeling its inner Silence of the Lambs, even though actual evidence was limited at best.

The university's newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, published an article back in 2006 claiming rare books existed in the school's collection that were bound and covered with human flesh.

An inscription is to blame. One book in question states the following:

“The bynding of this booke is all that remains of my dear friende Jonas Wright, who was flayed alive by the Wavuma on the Fourth Day of August, 1632. King Mbesa did give me the book, it being one of poore Jonas chiefe possessions, together with ample of his skin to bynd it. Requiescat in pace.”

This inscription alone has caused speculation for years that poor Jonas Wright was really having a bad day. Yet, according to Harvard Law School's blog, research done by Daniel Kirby, a conservation scientist at Harvard University's Art Museums' Straus Center, used something called peptide mass fingerprinting to analyze the cover and bindings of the book to discern once and for all if Jonas has forever been memorialized in literal literary form.

The findings? The cover is sheepskin, the glue is is a mixture of cattle and pig collagen.

And, thus, this is probably the last anyone will care about Jonas Wright. He just can't win in this situation.




Photo: via Harvard Law blog

Harvard receives a record $150 million gift.

For a university sitting on a $32 billion endowment, the last thing it needs is another kiss of cash from a former student. But whereas countless donations to schools go in the form of having buildings named after the benefactor, hedge-fund chieftain Ken Griffin has a specific reason for his donation of the biggest monetary gift in the school's nearly 400-year old existence.

The $150 million is to be used to fund students less financially affluent than your typical Ivy Leaguer, providing full scholarships for 200 undergraduates, and offering matching funds for 600 others. Current tuition at Harvard runs around $39,000, but including fees, room and board, and other costs, the price is closer to $56,000.

In case you're wondering, according to CNN, 20% of Harvard's students come from families who earn less than $65,000 a year. The US Census Bureau reports that the median household income in the United States between 2008-2012 was $53,046--meaning more than 80% of Harvard students come from affluent (or, at least, quite financially comfortable) backgrounds, at least by American standards.

And there's your education equality in America.

Poets Reading Poetry: E.E. Cummings

Poetry is meant to be read aloud, but rarely is. As Oscar Wilde once said, "A poet can survive everything but a misprint."

So, cutting out the middle man, here is where we'll post famous poets reading their own poetry--the words off the page and in your ears, as they intended. And hopefully nothing is lost in the process.


Today: E.E. Cummings

In 1952, Harvard University awarded E.E. Cummings an honorary seat as a lecturing professor. The Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry is named after a former member of the Harvard faculty and is awarded to someone deemed distinguished in the entire arts field, not just poetry. Indeed, the award is granted to "poetry in the broadest sense," which explains why from 1939-1940 composer Igor Stravinsky held the seat, and Aaron Copland was bestowed with the honor the year before Cummings. (For 2014, famed jazz musician Herbie Hancock is the award winner.)

Incumbents deliver six lectures during their term. For Cummings, the lectures were just the opposite, as his speeches were published under the title "i--six nonlectures." As the book states, Cummings warned his audience "I haven't the remotest intention of posing as a lecturer."

On May 28, 1953, during one such (non)lecture recorded here, Cummings read his poem anyone lived in a pretty how town, which was published in 1940.

His voice is crisp, staccato, deliberate--an educated, yet mildly creepy tone in the vein of a B-grade movie monster. Picture Bela Lugosi's Dracula, circa 1930.


anyone lived a pretty how town

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain


recording: BrainPickings.org

Helen Mirren twerks at Harvard.

Because it's more interesting than Miley doing it.

The 68-year old Oscar winner was honored as Harvard University's Hasty Pudding Theatricals' Woman of the Year. The undergraduate drama troupe is the oldest of its kind in the United States, and annually bestows an honor on a male and female actor who have made a lasting impact to the profession.

Part of the award process requires the winner to perform weird pop culture quirks (twerking!), while male troupe members dress in drag.

Yeah, the Hasty Pudding crowd has their fingers on the pulse of comedy, circa 1933.

Most common grade at Harvard University is an A, admits dean.

Confirming suspicions of a grade inflation issue at one of America's premier colleges and universities, the Dean of Undergraduate Education at Harvard University, Jay M. Harris, told the school newspaper the most commonly awarded grade is an A, while the median grade is an A-.

A university full of geniuses? Not quite. The same issue has plagued many colleges and universities, most notably the Ivy League variety. A review of grades at Yale University between 2010 and 2012 showed that 62% of all grades were in the A range.

This all comes on the heals of Princeton University's desire to reexamine its grading policy implemented in 2004, which required that no more than 35% of an individual class's grades should be an A. Critics deem it grade deflation, which puts Princeton in the back of the pack when it comes to which Ivy League school the elites want to attend.

As Yale student Aaron Berman told the school newspaper, "The feeling I got after visiting Princeton was that the grade deflation put too much pressure on students and made students feel as if they were competing for grades."

Because if there's one thing a student shouldn't do, it's work hard for a grade.

4 minutes detailing the various dialects of American English.

The Atlantic surveyed various Americans and asked them to pronounce a variety of words and phrases largely based off North Carolina State's Joshua Katz's dialect maps of the United States, which he, in turn, developed off Harvard's 2003 Dialect Survey.



Cape Cod lights up for 85% of the answers. There's your linguistic melting pot of America--the part trying to get as far away from America as it can.

Harvard students asked what the capital of Canada is. No one knows.

As someone who grew up and spent most of their life near the campuses and students of Harvard, MIT, Tufts, etc...

Yeah.

Admittedly, Ottawa is a strange, mystical city of the north, full of elves and gnomes. You can't expect people to know that.